AFRICAN PLUME

By Akin Ojumu “A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matthew 7:18) INEC is a diseased tree. It cannot conduct free and fair elections. INEC is a rotten tree. It’s incapable of producing legitimate election results. To expect INEC to umpire honest elections, is to expect a snowball to survive the heat of hellfire. The 2023 presidential election conducted by INEC was a sham. The subsequent ongoing collation of election results is fraudulent. Whatever results INEC comes out of this election allocation exercise would amount to nothing but fruits of a poisonous tree that cannot be allowed to stand. If the INEC tree itself is tainted, so is the fruit that it produces. No one in their right mind deliberately consumes the rotten fruit of a diseased tree. Sane people understand that eating fetid fruits often leads to deleterious consequences. Only the insane or someone on a

By Akin Ojumu In this silly season when otherwise educated and reasonable individuals seem to have lost their senses and decency, it’s important they be reminded of the recent past. Even in this period, when some people would not let facts get in the way of their fallacious nonsense, it’s crucial that the truth be told.  For those armchair historians on social media, who are busy peddling revisionist history and spreading uninformed psychobabble that the Ndigbos never support or vote for Yoruba candidates when it comes to presidential elections in Nigeria, I’m here to set the record straight. Twenty political parties fielded candidates in the 2003 presidential election. Of those twenty candidates, seven were from the South-East. The Igbo candidates were namely, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Jim Nwobodo, Ike Nwachukwu, Arthur Nwankwo, Emmanuel Okereke, Kalu Ndika Kalu, and Iheanyichukwu Godswill Nnaji.  These Igbo stalwarts locked horns with the two leading candidates in the election, Ol

By Akin Ojumu Bludgeoned by APC thugs and hoodlums, the lady in this photo refused to bend. Bruised and beaten by touts and miscreants of Bala Blu, she would not break. They tried to steal her vote, but she instead shoved her PVC down their throats. She exercised her franchise and would not be denied. This is the face of democracy in Nigeria; it ’ s democracy the Nigerian way. You pay for it in pounds of flesh and pints of blood. Not satisfied with taking your voice and your rights, they ’ ll take  your limbs and  steal your life as well. It ’ s government by the godfathers, by the bottom-feeders,  and by the area boys and motor park gangbangers. This photo epitomizes the evil that resides within the soul of Nigeria. It’s a representation of the dehumanization of the Nigerian people by those who would want to cling to power by all means. The photo captures the brute force deployed by the cruel rulers of Nigeria to enslave ordinary Nigerians in their own homeland. It’s a photo that capt

By Akin Ojumu As hellholes go, Nigeria is a maximum-security prison. For the vast majority of the population, living in Nigeria is like being condemned to a life sentence without the possibility of parole. As the British like to say, Nigerians are doing a whole life order. Daily existence for many is extreme hard labor in a Soviet-era gulag. Typical of those who are incarcerated, Nigerians manifest all the biopsychosocial traits of institutionalized inmates. The people are characteristically violent and habitually cruel. Anxiety and depression are common occurrences and hypervigilance is a way of life. Distasteful aggression and off-putting belligerence are the very nature of many Nigerians.  After years of existence in the jailhouse called Nigeria, the jailbirds experience a gradual erosion of their physical, mental, and social well-being. Over the course of their imprisonment, Nigerians become defined by stress and everyday life is like being locked up in a pressure cooker.  Overwhel

By Akin Ojumu Those who think Nigeria is a nation are sorely mistaken and have no clue what a nation truly is. By its proper definition, a nation is a community of people formed on the basis of shared cultural identity, common language, and ethnicity. A country, on the other hand, is a self-governing political entity. It’s an independent sovereign state or part of a larger state, a physical territory with a government, or a geographic region associated with sets of previously independent or differently associated people. As a geopolitical entity, the country called Nigeria is a syncretic amalgamation of disparate independent nations by the British colonizers. Except for their geographical close proximity and skin color, the more than 250 nations that make up Nigeria share nothing in common at all. They are distinct culturally, linguistically, and ethnically. In furtherance of their pillaging of Africa, the British monarchy created an artificial geopolitical contraption by amalgamating

By Akin Ojumu We can no longer afford to play ostrich. Democracy just cannot flourish amid tribal fear, ignorance, and apathy. Liberty cannot bloom amid complacency. Justice cannot take root amid compromise. Nigerians must get off their comfort zones and get to work. We must get our heads in the game and stop the fooling around. Now is not the time to sidon-look and there’s no seating this one out. This job is about saving Nigeria and it requires that all hands be on deck. In the sweltering climate in which we live, we must cause the wind of change to blow away the stench oozing from the rotten carcasses of deadbeat leaders and rid the air of the odor exuding from cadavers of vampirous rulers. Nigerians must dissent from the aloofness and indifference. We must dissent from the apathy and lethargy. We must dissent from the fear of other tribes, the hatred of other ethnic groups, and the mistrust of people who don’t speak our dialect.  We must dissent from a nation that has buried its he

By Akin Ojumu Various fields of human endeavor, and societies and cultures all over the world, have witty sayings and evocative adages coined to describe the human behavioral pattern in which an individual or groups of individuals who while experiencing exponentially increasing deleterious consequences from their own actions and decisions choose to continue to repeat the behavior instead of altering course or changing direction. To describe this type of irrational behavior, Sociologists often use the term “Irrational escalation of Commitment” or “Commitment Bias”. Economists and behavioral scientists, likewise, have a related term they use to describe the same thing. They call it “Sunk-Cost Fallacy”. Sunk-cost fallacy is the justification of increased investment of money or effort in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment (i.e., “sunk cost”) despite abundance of evidence that suggests the future cost of continuing the behavior outweighs the anticipated benefit. Idioms suc

By Akin Ojumu At the height of the Yoruba nation agitation, Bola Tinubu summoned the South-West leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to a meeting in Lagos on Sunday, May 21, 2021. Present at the meeting were Bola Tinubu, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Dapo Abiodun, Adegboyega Oyetola, and Bisi Akande. Others were Alani Akinrinade, Segun Osoba, Niyi Adebayo and Pius Akinyelure among others. Following the meeting, the group of elderly misfits addressed members of the press during which they strongly denounced the growing clamor by a segment of the Yorubas for an independent nation where the safety and security of the Yoruba people can be guaranteed.  Reading the communiqué, Bisi Akande, the spokesperson for the group said the following: “We express our strong opposition to separatist agitations and hate speeches, while urging those indulging in such to desist forthwith.”  This group of treacherous Yoruba leaders labelled their people’s outcry for safety and security in their own homes as

By Akin Ojumu Munchausen syndrome. That’s quite mouthful, right? Many of you have probably never heard of the term until now. It’s a medical condition in which an individual repeatedly and deliberately acts as if they have a physical or mental illness when they are actually not sick at all. This individual is always visiting the doctor to complain of one ailment or another. Each time the person presents to the hospital, they are probed and prodded from head to toe and inside out. After extensive examinations and battery of tests, the results always return negative, with nothing being found to be wrong with the person. Within a few short days, the person is back, complaining of the same symptoms or a different set of symptoms this time around. As usual, they’ll undergo comprehensive physical examination and laboratory tests to determine the ailment. Like the last time, all the results will turn out to be negative. While Munchausen syndrome describes situations in which someone falsifies

By Akin Ojumu Nothing speaks to the character of a nation more than the type of individuals they choose to lead them. The identity of a people is intricately woven into the fabrics of the moral fortitude of their leaders. Good fruits don't come from bad trees, and neither bad fruits from good trees. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Only a nation of bent character elect shysters as their leaders. Amongst people who place a high premium on moral nobility, men and women of perfidious pedigree find no home in the corridors of power. In places where honesty and integrity matter, scalawags and fraudsters are locked up in jail and not elevated to the highest offices in the land. Elections have profound consequences. The choice you make at the polls is your voice speaking your tomorrow into existence. Whom you elect will shape your future and determine your prospect. Thumbprinting the wrong party on the ballot paper is akin to signing your own death warrant. If you vote for a

By Akin Ojumu While campaigning in Abeokuta last June, in the run up to the APC presidential primary elections, Bola Tinubu gave his now famous “Emi lokan”  – i.e., “It’s my turn” – speech. It was during that speech that Tinubu boasted that were it not for his effort and unflinching support, Buhari would never have become the president of Nigeria. According to Tinubu: “O se kini, o lu le. O se keji, o lu le. O se keta, o lule. O tie sun kun lo ri television, pe laye oun ohun ni run mo. Mo de loba ni Kaduna, waa run. Oro ekun ko le leyi. Ma duro ti e. Wa de wole. Nkan kan ni wipe, o ni foro orilede Yoruba se re. O de gba. Mo wa ni lo te yi o, Yoruba lo kan. Ta ba se sa Yoruba naa, emi lokan.” Translated… “He ran the first time, he failed. He ran the second time, he failed. He ran the third time, he failed. He even went on TV weeping and vowing never to run again. So, I traveled all the way to Kaduna to reassure him. I told him he will still run. Weeping will not solve this run of loses.

By Olufunso Adedokun, née Ojumu O Lord! You are the One who makes kings and gives rulership to whomever you want. Have mercy on the country Nigeria, and deliver our people from their gross blindness, unarousable hypnotism, and deep slumber of the mind. Deliver us from nepotism, racism, and self-love. Father God, drop just an ounce of national love in the hearts of Nigerians and purge us from heresies and sentiments that my fellow Nigerians have expressed, such as, “You waste your vote if your choice doesn't win an election,” “If I don’t vote others will vote,” “I can live my life in respective of who the leader is,” and so on. Save us O Lord from this precipice where we’ve brought ourselves as a nation. Don't let us fall into a deeper depth of desperation, O Lord. Hear our cry, O Lord, and make our people reason rightly and make the right choice. Make them to, for once in their lives, decide for Nigeria and not for Yoruba, Igbo, or Hausa. I pray and plead in the precious Name o

By Akin Ojumu When PDP came to power in 1999, petrol sold for N20 per liter and the Naira exchanged at a rate of N90 to $1. By the time they handed over power, the cost of petrol was N87 per liter and the exchange rate was N300 to $1. Under PDP, the price of petrol increased by a whopping 335 percent, while the Naira depreciated by 233 percent. In 2015, the APC regime took over from the PDP. Back then, Nigerians were buying petrol for N87 per liter and the exchange rate was N300 to $1. After eight years of APC misrule and mismanagement, the price at the pump is now N200 per liter of petrol. The Naira currently exchanges at the rate of N800 to $1. The APC regime increased petrol price by 130 percent, and the party of the demented incompetents crashed the Naira by 167 percent. For sixteen years, the PDP cannibalized Nigeria and left the country as a hollowed-out carnage of pain, misery, and suffering. The APC has held presidential powers for half as long as the PDP. In that brief period,

By Akin Ojumu Masochism is a psychosexual disorder in which erotic release is achieved through having pain inflicted on oneself. If you ask me, Nigerians are sadomasochists who derive some form of sexual gratification from inflicting excruciating pain upon themselves. Encoded in the DNA of Nigerians is the propensity for self-inflicted humiliation. The genetic constitution of the Nigerian character is weirdly wired for self-debasement. What sort of human beings are these people, really? How else can anyone explain the Nigerians’ habit of perpetually blowing up every prospect they have to chart a new course for posterity. Something must be profoundly wrong with Nigerians. Their inborn error to mess a good chance all up is nothing but pure madness. Nigerians’ penchant for self-destruction bespeaks of a loose screw flying around somewhere deep in their psyche.  Every four years since 1999, Nigerians get the chance to steer the wobbling ship of their nation’s destiny in the right direction

By Akin Ojumu Here we go again. Ten days to one of the most consequential elections in the nation’s history, Nigerians are clamoring for an old man who, before our eyes, is manifesting all the classic symptoms of dementia.  After 8 years of Buhari, some folks insist it’s a cognitively impaired old man who should become the next president of Nigeria. For some inexplicable reasons, these folks think this man with obvious mental difficulties should be the one to rule Nigeria for the next 4 years or more. Just so it’s clear, I have no problem with having an aged person run the nation’s affairs. My Uncle, the man who raised me, is now in his 80s. But he remains as sharp as a tack and his mind doesn’t miss a beat. He talks coherently and intelligibly. He continues to amaze me with the sharpness of his memory, intellect, and insight. My Uncle can tell you events that happened 70 years ago with prescient details. If he runs for president, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat. So, the issue I have w